The House of the Dead

This being notice of my first attempt at Dostoevsky since having a serious attempt at ‘The Idiot’ a couple years ago. An attempt which ground to a halt despite the obvious merit.

Dostoevsky was arrested in 1849 for political offences which seem trivial now, indeed not offences at all, but were then capital offences, carried as far as a mock execution in a public square in St. Petersburg, commuted in the nick of time to four years in Siberia, to be followed by five years service in a Siberian regiment. He died, aged 59, in 1881. Amongst other problems, he gambled and he had epilepsy.

This novel draws on this Siberian experience, but is framed as extracts from extensive jottings made by a ten year man which fell posthumously into the author’s hands. An easy read, and although it does start with arrival and finishes with departure, it is not a narrative; rather, largely made up of set pieces like being in the prison hospital and the Christmas show put on by the convicts.

The author's observations concerning the character and behaviour of the prisoners are striking, with their peculiar circumstance making for peculiar demeanour and behaviour. There is a great deal of theft, verbal abuse and bad temper, although it rarely gets out of hand. Maybe it was what got them through the days.

The conditions in the prisons of Siberia in the 19th century were fairly horrific, perhaps particularly for a noble. Irons were worn the whole time and were only stuck off at release. Punishment could be brutal. The barracks in which they were confined for much of the time were crowded and filthy. But at the same time, there was a humanity at work. The convicts could put on a Christmas show. There was booze. Even the odd mistress. And there was a fair bit of interchange between the prison and the town. Indeed, a fair number of the prisoners made a good living out of the town, plying some trade or another.

I associate to a story from a military policeman, active in the 1960’s, who explained to us that however hard you tried to isolate prisoners inside a prison, the guards and the prisoners were all people. There would be stuff going on, there would be stuff going backwards and forwards. This in the context of Spandau, to which he had hoped to be posted.

I had thought to try ‘Poor Folk’ next, Dostoevsky’s first novel, written before he went to Siberia. I felt sure that I had a copy, another of the red Everyman editions that came down to me from my father, but search at home has failed to reveal it. Not on the Kindle. And as already noticed at reference 6, a search in Epsom has failed to turn one up.

So something to keep an eye out for.

References

Reference 1: The House of the Dead – Dostoevsky – 1862. 

Reference 2: Poor Folk – Dostoevsky – 1846.

Reference 3: The Idiot – Dostoevsky – 1868-9.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkhoyansk. A place in Siberia with rather extreme weather. Up to 40°C in the summer, down to -65°C in the winter – which is rather longer than the summer.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandau_Prison. 

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/trolley-422.html. 

Reference 7: https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/editorial-images. The owners of the picture above. Lightly edited caption: ‘A reproduction of a photograph of prisoners in the museum of the Prison Castle in Tobolsk, Russia. The Prison Castle, a strict regime prison … was built during 1838-1855. The architectural ensemble consisted of several cell blocks, a hospital for prisoners, an administrative building, and other premises ... Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a famous Russian writer, spent about 10 days in one of the prisons in Tobolsk while he was transferred to Omsk for penal servitude. This prison was closed in 1989 [and was] opened to tourists. It accommodates the city archive, a museum, a hostel, a libraty, etc. Tourists can stay in a hostel which used to be a block of sweat-boxes, that is to say punishments cells. Photo by Alexander Aksakov/Getty Images’.